It looks like this subject is winding down a little, but some of those so strongly opposed to party huntings should consider a few things. Party hunting hunting and deer drives are not necessarly the same thing. Drives are conducted by shotgun hunters, muzzle loaders, and even bow hunters, and are done for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with slaughter. For most first season shotgun hunters the season is on 1 and 1/2 days long over the week end, and for many of these hunters to even see deer much less harvest one is to make drives to move the deer.
I agree that some people abuse the party tag rule, but the only complaint I have seen is perhaps some jelosousy that one person may have shot two or three bucks that the complainant did'nt have the chance to shoot. No one said any thing about the person that shot three does and put tags on them and hauled the to the HUSH locker. We need to face the facts antlers on a deer make it more desirable, but that it is still just one animal in an over population situation. Our harvest numbers have been going up and so has the deer population, and we are told we must harvest more deer. If we do away with the party hunting and deer drives what happens to those harvest numbers. They go DOWN, and the deer increase more and the DNR and farmers and insurance companies want more NR hunters and more land is leased and taken out of our hunting areas and the lower the harvest numbers go.
As for the unrecovered deer killed during the gun seasons I would venture to say that the only reason that the numbers aren't as high with bow hunters and others is that there aren't as many bow hunters. I know this might rile some of you guys, but know this I am a bow hunter also. There are just as many slob bow hunters on a percentage basis as the gun hunters with about the same percentage of wounded or lost animals. There are some bow hunters that buy a bow and shoot 6 arrows to get the idea and then use hunting as their practice round. Two years ago I heard one such person buying more arrows at Walmart and bragging that he had "stuck" three deer so far but couldn't find any of them and had ran out of arrows and since he still had his tags he needed more arrows.
I will shut up now but I do want to agree with those voices of reason explaining that we should not be fighting amoung ourselves. We may not agree with a hunting method but as long as others enjoy it and it is legal and ethical why do we assume the right to critize other hunters who might not agree with our style of hunting?
